Communication sessions may be established between two or more devices operating in a data networking environment. In certain instances those communication sessions may be setup between third party network elements which perform relay functions for the corresponding network devices. Multi-channel data transmission functions are based on more than one type of channel. For example, a control channel and a data channel may be used concurrently to perform a relay function. Current data transmission performed in data networks may be susceptible to connection loss, such as unexpected connection drops and lost communication sessions. This invention presents a method that uses multi-channel data transmission to provide fault tolerance in case of a connection failure.